Westworld: About Maeve
Who brings humanity into Westworld
The last episode of Westworld season 2 has been released for weeks. Compared with the season1, season 2 is less complex in storyline and timeline. There are some episodes can be considered as an independent story. Nevertheless, I still suggest you watching the whole season so you won’t miss anything crucial and understand more about the characters.
The two key elements to write an attractive story are charming characters and the events influencing them, especially their reactions to the events. The inner conflicts no matter leads to self-destroy or self-growth, both arouse my curiosity.
Not only against human, but also self-growth
If you only watch the trailer, it seems that war between the hosts and the human is the main story in season 2, but the hosts’ stories are more important than that. Dolores, Maeve, and Bernard, these three hosts play the most important roles in many episodes in season 2. Maeve is my favorite character in three of them because her developments and the significant difference between herself and Dolores.
The awaking of the hosts is very similar to self-growth of human. Before awaking, the hosts repeated fixed narratives and live in a normal life until the accidents broke their daily life and loops. This chaos made them suffer to be defeated or to survive. For those awakened hosts, their reactions to the conflicts reinforced and rebuilt their personal core values.
In first season, hosts obtained the ability to explore their subconscious and deleted memories due to the update of “Reveries” function. Like nightmares, the lost memories came back and haunted the hosts. Because the endless recalling and thinking, they started to question the natural of their reality.
Dolores painfully digged into her mind and saw the darkside by introspection. According to the bicameral mind, a theory used in season 1, she found her self-conscious in the process of communicating with herself. In comparison, Maeve’s way was very different, she fearlessly sacrificed her life again and again to reach the truth of reality.
“You think I’m scared of death? I’ve done it a million times”
After the awakening, Maeve decided to step on the journey to finding her daughter. Her original plan was to escape from the park and went to the outside world for freedom, but something happened when she was on the train leaving the park.
A woman and her child reminded her memories with her daughter in another life. After struggling, she gave up her freedom, and went back to find her daughter, even though she knew her daughter was just a series of code instead of a real one. In that moment, she was not controlled by the code someone programed for her, she truly got her free will.
How much will we sacrifice for growth and being stronger? No pain, no gain. What will you choose to sacrifice?
Acceptance, respect and support
In Shogun world, Maeve meets Akane, a Japanese version of her. Akane was also a brothel madam sharing the same personality and narratives just like Maeve. In the beginning, Maeve tried to persuade Akane, Musashi and others to leave the park and chase the truly freedom in real world.
After they defeated Shogun, Tanaka, one of Shogun’s subordinates who blocked their way back to village, he wanted a fight with Musashi. When Maeve started to use her power to manipulate Tanaka, Musashi asked her not to control Tanaka because he wanted a fair fight with Bushido spirit. Finally, Akane chose to stay in the park, and Musashi would rather risk his life than win without a battle.
Akane’s and Musashi’s decisions made Maeve understand there was another type of freedom. The trip in Shogun world redefined her definition of free will, and she also learnd acceptance and respect from it.
When she found her daughter, the fight with man in black and the cleared up the misunderstanding between herself and Akecheta, the leader in Ghost Nation. She finally gave up her dream of getting together with her daughter. Instead of holding her daughter in her arms, she kept her promise to let her daughter stay in a safe world.
These series of events foreshadowed the climax of her story. Maeve’s story shows us not only the parent’s powerful strength to protect child but also her free will to respecting for others choice.
“Some things are too precious to lose. Even to be free.”
When we face the people with different thoughts, maybe it is a very great progress for us to accept diversity than despise others. However, how many people will make their support into action, and how many will sacrifice their benefit to others freedom, fair, and rights?
Maeve’s stunning story brings more humanity in season 2 story, though she is not even a real human. Maybe is her programming ability of understanding and sharing the feelings of others makes her knows better about sacrifice than other people, or maybe just the motherhood she owns. No matter what it is, they are both the reasons why I love this character the most.
